Washington - (AFP) - The United States decided to cancel, as of 00:01 Wednesday (04:01 GMT), the exemption that allows Russia to pay its foreign debts in dollars, according to what the US Treasury announced, in a decision that would accelerate Moscow defaulted on its payments.

Thus, the exemption from the severe financial sanctions imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, two days before the next payment date, is revoked.

The next maturity in the Russian debt repayment program is scheduled for May 27, and the amount is 100 million euros. This amount is the value of interest due on two issues, one of which forces Russia to pay the amount in dollars, euros, pounds sterling, or Swiss francs, while the second can be paid in rubles.

The exemption has been in effect since Western countries began imposing sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and it had enabled Moscow to avoid default.

And last week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that Washington had made the decision in order to "provide a time limit for making regular transfers and in order to enable investors to sell securities."

She indicated that the United States would likely suspend the exemption that allows Moscow to pay its foreign debts in dollars.

On April 29, the governor of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, confirmed that "we cannot talk about default," recognizing at the same time that Moscow is facing "difficulties in paying."

The value of Russia's external debt, according to the Russian Ministry of Finance, is approximately 4,500 to 4,700 billion rubles (about fifty billion euros at the current exchange rate), or 20% of the country's total public debt.

Russia had previously defaulted on domestic debt in rubles during the financial crisis in 1998, but the country had not defaulted on foreign debt since 1918 when Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin refused to recognize the debts that Moscow inherited from the Tsar's regime after the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew him in 1917.